


Lies We Tell Ourselves

by QueenOfAllCorgis



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Immortal Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus's first time dying was in vietnam, M/M, character death but it doesn't stick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26086810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfAllCorgis/pseuds/QueenOfAllCorgis
Summary: Klaus dies for the first time in Vietnam.Dave didn't expect him to come back.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 16
Kudos: 473





	Lies We Tell Ourselves

Klaus was laughing when it happened.

Honestly, Dave couldn’t even remember what they were laughing about. One moment they were digging trenches, mumbling around their cigarettes and the next they were laughing. He remembered because Klaus’s eyes were overly bright and his grin was wide.

He looked so damn beautiful.

He always did but especially when he was this free, this unguarded. 

He was laughing and then he wasn’t. 

They should have been more guarded, more aware of their surroundings but...marching for hours and eating only the rations with the least number of maggots in them was wearing on them. It seemed safe to just have a moment to pretend they weren’t in hell. 

The soldiers that had stumbled across them, a small crew, were untrained and skittish. Panicked, they had fired at the men and had been taken down just as quickly. It wasn’t anything important. It wasn’t a battle that would be written about in history books. It didn’t even take more than just a few of the marines on active guard to eliminate the threat.

But, one bullet can do a lot of damage.

One moment they were laughing and joking and the next there was a spray of something hot across Dave’s face. He started, gripping his shovel tightly and dropped to the ground out of pure instinct. 

There was shouting in the jungle, a few more gunshots, a moment of silence and then an all clear was called out. Dave let out a shaky breath, chastising himself for not being more focused and then he saw Klaus. 

Klaus was on his side, hands curled around his throat and gasping in little aborted wheezes. He managed to turn bright, bright green eyes to Dave and opened his mouth to say something but just blood bubbled out from between his lips. 

“Fuck,” Dave gasped and fell to his knees beside him, hands fluttering uselessly near his shoulder. “Klaus? Klaus, talk to me?”

It was like his brain couldn’t even catch up to what his eyes were seeing. Klaus’s chest was hitching and his fingers had curled into claws, scrabbling at  _ so so so much blood. _ He gasped again and blood dribbed between his teeth, streaking down his chin. 

He was bleeding.

He was bleeding. 

Dave tried to pull the hands away to see the damage and instantly wished he hadn’t. His throat was completely shredded by a bullet. Blood poured out with every beat of his heart, spilling over wet muscle and tissue and was that white glint his  _ spine? _

A medic was called for but it wouldn’t matter.

It wouldn’t matter.

There was no surviving this kind of injury. This wasn’t a cut that Klaus would complain about all day. This was the end, just one bullet ended everything. One shot from a nervous soldier and that bright life was snuffed out.

“Hey,” he felt numb, a residual panic thrumming through his blood. Klaus’s terrified eyes met his and his mouth gaped a bit, desperately trying to find words that couldn’t escape his ruined throat. “Hey, hey. I’m here. I’m here, okay?”

A terrible gurgling choke made tears fill his eyes. 

“I’m not going nowhere. I’m here baby,” he took Klaus’s hand and squeezed it tightly, not caring that the group of soldiers were staring at him. The medic had shown up but stood useless beside him. “I’m here, okay? It’s okay, you’re okay.”

That was a damn lie. 

Klaus stared up at him, making him the entire focus of his rapidly dimming world. His face was losing color, paling further than before and making the blood stand out starkly. It poured into the mud around them, staining the earth and his clothes but Dave couldn’t take his eyes off of Klaus.

He couldn’t look away and have Klaus die when his attention was elsewhere. 

He couldn’t leave him alone like that. 

“I love you,” he whispered, tears burning hot. “I love you.”

The fear faded a bit from Klaus’s eyes and he lifted on shaking red hand to grab onto Dave’s shoulder. The fingers scrabbled up to cup the side of his neck and trace lightly along the curve of his jaw. Dave reached up to place his hand over Klaus’s, desperate to keep him grounded. 

Desperate to keep him here.

“You hear me? I love you Klaus,” he choked out, ignoring the silence of the men around him. Fuck them and what they thought. “It’s all going to be okay.”

He could see the exact moment it was over. 

Klaus stared at him, eyes bright and chest heaving. Then, his chest stuttered and the terrible choking sound went away. He blinked a few times, each one longer than the last, before his eyes went perfectly blank. 

And that was it.

It was done.

Dave stared down at him, not even aware that he was sobbing. Not even aware that he was begging Klaus to come back. Not even aware that he was screaming. 

It took four men to pull him away. 

It took one man to close those green eyes forever. 

It was second nature by now, taking care of the dead. A stretcher was pulled out and Klaus was lifted onto it, looking almost frail. They did take care though, making sure his arms were at his sides and his body lay straight. There was a great fondness for their unit’s resident looney, a great respect for him as well. 

No one said anything as Dave followed them to the hastily set up medical tent. Klaus would wait here until the next supply truck came through, carrying him away like he was nothing more than cargo. 

“Who do we contact?” The medic asked softly. They all knew that Klaus’s paperwork was...less than complete. “His family or-”

“His family won’t come for him,” Dave mumbled sitting cross legged on the ground by the stretcher (by the body but he couldn’t stand to think that). “He didn’t talk much about them but there wasn’t much love there.”

The medic nodded, face schooled into careful blankness. Klaus would be sent back, buried in the cheapest lot with the cheapest marker over his grave. Forgotten, lost among the dead. The idea of it made something twist painfully in Dave’s gut. 

“There was nothing anyone could do,” the medic mumbled and Dave felt suddenly  _ mean. _

“No shit,” he snarled, looking down at the mess of gore at Klaus’s throat. Carefully, he pulled off his own jacket and placed it over Klaus’s still body. When he pulled the jacket up to his chin it covered the wound and made him look like he was just sleeping. 

Like he did that time in Saigon. 

They had spent the night together and Dave couldn’t tear his eyes away from the beautiful man sharing a bed with him. It was a moment, with the morning light tracing along his pale skin and his face relaxed in sleep, that Dave wanted to keep forever. 

And then he was alone.

The medic had left, no one else dared come into the tent, and he was left alone with Klaus. 

Dave felt antsy, nervous in a way. He pulled out his canteen and wet the corner of his sleeve. As gently as he could, he cleaned the blood off of Klaus’s face. The trails that fell down his chin and his cheek. The spray from when his carotid was hit. The streak when Dave had traced his thumb along his cheekbone. 

How was this fair?

How had he gone his entire life looking for something only to find that it was so much more than he had ever dreamed? How had he lost that thing with just a tiny piece of metal? How was that fucking fair?

Tears started falling again and Dave leaned back against a crate, feeling empty. The sobs tore at his chest, feeling like it was shredding him from the inside out. Good. That was what he wanted. He wanted to hurt. He wanted to feel agony. 

Klaus shouldn’t be the one lying here. 

None of them should. 

None of them should-

And then Klaus gasped. 

Dave wasn’t too proud to say that he didn’t nearly have a  _ fucking heart attack _ . One moment Klaus was lying so still and the next he was gasping in heavy, raspy breaths. Harsh coughs shook his too thin frame and green eyes squinted open. 

“Klaus?” He breathed, scrambling closer. 

He shifted on the stretcher and the jacket fell a bit. His throat, once a mess of muscle and bone, was perfectly whole again. Klaus’s hands jumped up, fingers shaking wildly to claw at his throat and he coughed harshly. 

“Hey, hey,” Dave took his hands, so confused and so afraid. “Just breathe, yeah?”

Klaus surged forward into a sitting position and practically fell into Dave’s arms, shaking like he would fall apart. He could hear Klaus’s teeth chatter, feel how hard he was shaking, but...but somehow he was alive.

Pulling away, Dave cupped Klaus’s face in his hands and traced his hand over his throat. “What the fuck? What...how?”

“Was I dead?” Klaus stuttered out, eyes glassy. “I need a fucking cigarette.”

“Your throat was gone,” Dave gasped, still feeling at the skin. “You went cold. You were gone Klaus.”

Green eyes blinked at him before Klaus pulled at the neck of his shirt, now stiff with dried blood. “Well...didn’t know I had this power.”

Dave just stared, unable to even think of a response to that. He watched as Klaus reached into his jacket pocket and lit a cigarette with badly shaking hands. It took a few deep inhales before it seemed like Klaus was able to get himself somewhat under control. 

“What the hell is going on?”

There was a moment where Klaus just stared at the smoke curling up to the ceiling of the tent. “Seems like I can come back from the dead.”

“That isn’t a fucking answer Klaus!”

Another twist of his face, a grimace. “Yeah...I...I guess I’m full of surprises huh? I didn’t know I could do that though...never died before. Oh man, oh man! Imagine if dear old daddy knew about this? What kind of fucked up experiments would he run?”

“Klaus,” Dave’s voice cracked and Klaus burst into tears. 

He curled in on himself, cigarette held in a dangerously loose grip by his leg. Dave snubbed out the cigarette and pulled him in for a tight hold, combing his fingers through soft curls and trying to ignore the dried blood. Klaus clung to him, hiccuping and choking on his sobs. 

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I don’t understand but it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Klaus shuddered at that. “You said that when I was dying.”

Trembling himself, Dave nodded. 

“I can see things,” Klaus whispered, voice almost too quiet to hear. “I can see dead people...that’s from a movie but you haven’t seen it. It’s actually pretty accurate though. Plus-”

“Klaus...”

“Oh, okay. You know I was adopted into a big family. My family is...different. We were all born with...gifts sounds stupid. I got the short end of the stick there. I can see and talk to ghosts,” in any other situation Dave would have laughed. But here, with Klaus shivering in his arms after coming back from the dead...maybe it wasn’t so absurd. 

“And you can come back from the dead.”

“Apparently,” he let out a shrill, almost hysterical laugh. “Yeah...apparently.”

Dave ran his hand up and down Klaus’s back. “Do you see ghosts now?”

“No,” Klaus shook his head. “Not right now. But...they’re always there. They’re angry and hurt and lost and...there’s so many of them.”

A chill ran down Dave’s spine at that. Seeing the dead might have been something people considered to be a gift but not here. Not in war. Just the idea made him feel a bit nauseous. 

“Okay, okay...so you can see the dead and you can’t die,” he felt ridiculous saying it but the raw vulnerability in Klaus’s eyes made him continue. “That we can work with.”

“Yeah? What about the guys? They  _ know _ Dave. You weren’t exactly subtle about it,” there wasn’t any malice in his tone but he looked nervous.

“Baby, you came back from the dead. I can tell you the fact that we’re screwing won’t be their focus,” Dave felt relief as Klaus’s lips quirked into a smile. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Klaus shrugged, hand reaching up to rub at his throat. “Honestly fine.”

“Good...good. It didn’t...it didn’t hurt did it?” Dave hated himself for asking but he had to know. 

Klaus was quiet for a bit, still touching his throat. “Nah. Just like fallin’ asleep.”

A lie. 

“Okay,” Dave nodded and pulled him in for a kiss, tasting the blood leftover on his lips. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

Klaus huffed out a laugh and pressed his forehead into his chest. “Maybe we should look at this like a blessing. Let me take the bullets okay?”

“Klaus-”

“No, really. In a fight, let me go first,” green eyes locked onto his. “Promise you won’t let yourself get hurt. Let me get hit first.”

“Okay...I promise.”

Another lie. 


End file.
